


Sticks and Stones

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-09
Updated: 2009-02-09
Packaged: 2019-01-19 23:06:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12420126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: "Lily was entirely convinced that the old 'sticks and stones' line never really did anyone any good past the age of seven. Even if she hadn't been convinced by this point, the look on James Potter's face as she delivered the most hostile speech she could think of would have been enough to convince anyone that words could create wounds ...





	Sticks and Stones

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

**A/N:** _Special thanks to Andrea for taking the time to look over this story before it came time to hand it in.— Happy Holidays!_

****

 

** Sticks & Stones **

_You did it to me, I did it to you...what the hell did it prove? Only that we know that we care about each other._

_'Sticks and Stones can break your bones, but words will never hurt you'_ is great advice when you're five years old and Agnes Wimberly is teasing you about the colour of your eyes, but Lily always thought the old 'sticks and stones' line should have come with a disclaimer.

_'Sticks and stones'_ doesn't make you feel any better when your best friend calls you a 'Mudblood' and it certainly doesn't help when someone tells you you'll never amount to anything, because you come from a Muggle home.

In fact, Lily would have gone as far as saying ' _sticks and stones'_ was nothing but a big pile of hogwash.

The truth of the matter was, words _did_ hurt.

Sure, sticks and stones could bruise and scrape you, but _those_ wounds were capable of healing over relatively quickly.

_Words,_ on the other hand, especially if chosen well, had the ability to leave lasting scars, or worse, create wounds that would _never_ truly heal over at all.

By the time she had reached her seventh year at Hogwarts, Lily was entirely convinced that the old _'sticks and stones'_ line never really did _anyone_ any good past the age of seven. Even if she hadn't been convinced by this point, the look on James Potter's face as she delivered the most hostile speech she could think of would have been enough to convince _anyone_ that words could create wounds nastier than the darkest of hexes...

 .

"You don't get it, do you Potter?—I don't give a _damn_ at all about you! In fact, if you decided to drop dead right now, I wouldn't care at all—I'd be glad to finally be rid of you because it'd mean I'd _finally_ be able to have some much needed peace in my life!"

His composure, perfectly in tact up until this point, faltered at her last words.

She noticed it first in the way the corners of his lips, which always seemed to be upturned in an annoying grin, fell and formed a straight line.

"Y-you don't mean that," he said suddenly.

Lily was certain he hadn't meant for his voice to shake at all, but it had, and Lily wondered if she was the only one who had noticed.

She watched his eyes; they were dark and void of the usual spark they carried.

"I _do_ mean it, Potter," she said quietly, never breaking eye contact. "Every word."

And that was it—the simple sentence she had just delivered had cemented everything. She had fired the spell that ended their verbal dual, and one look into James' eyes, full of a pain she had never seen before, was enough for her to know that if they had been duelling with wands, her last spell would have left him crumpled in a heap on the floor.

"Fine," James said, tight-lipped, in a whisper she almost had to strain to hear. "I _get_ it."

And with a quiet _'Excuse me_ , _'_ he fought his way through the small crowd that had at some point circled around them, and Lily, unable to think of anything but the pain on James' face, which was now permanently burned into her eyes, stood frozen.

"Are you happy now?" Sirius asked, his voice breaking her trance for a moment. His voice was icy and Lily didn't think she had ever seen Sirius this upset at anyone who wasn't directly related to him by blood.

"James—James, wait!"

Lily watched as Sirius ran in the direction James had disappeared down only seconds ago and Lily could do nothing but watch.

The small crowd that had gathered was muttering amongst themselves, each expressing the same sentiments: James Potter had finally broken—been knocked off his high pedestal by none other than _Lily Evans_.

Wasn't this what Lily had wanted all along? Shouldn't she be patting herself on the back for finally teaching James Potter a lesson he didn't just brush off at the drop of a hat? Shouldn't she be feeling accomplished, smug and a thousand other different emotions of the same calibration? She _should_ have, but the fact of the matter was, Lily couldn't feel _anything._

It was as if her entire body had shut down and she had cruelly been left with only her sense of sight so she could see the damage she had caused, unobscured by any of her other senses. Suddenly, the room was turning on its side...

When had she sunk to the floor?

Someone was shaking her and she met a set of soft brown eyes framed by a round face— _Alice._

Alice was trying to say something. Her mouth was moving, but whatever Alice was saying would not register in her head because Lily was drowning like a fish out of water and her ears were suffering from the pressure...

Alice delivered a sharp blow to her back and Lily drew in a ragged breath and her lungs ached from the intrusion of air—

How long ago had she stopped breathing?

Her senses were coming back to her now, but having the feeling return to her legs didn't really make Lily feel all that better.

_'Alice should have let me drown'_ she thought miserably.

"Lily?" Alice called softly. "Are you okay?"

Lily raised her green eyes to meet those of her best friend, but instead of answering Alice's question, Lily voiced the one thought that had been running through her head since she had seen the obvious hurt shining in James' eyes.

"Alice, what have I done?"

"Lily...you had no way of knowing—"

"But I _did_ , Alice, that's the point!" Lily cried.

"I did it with the intentions of deliberately hurting him—I wanted him to feel...to feel..." Lily trailed off, her voice growing soft. "I just... didn't expect to..."

"Didn't expect to feel any pain of your own?" Alice said, finishing the thought Lily couldn't.

Lily subconsciously rubbed the middle of her chest as though that were the source of the pain and she was trying to alleviate it.

"Why does it hurt, Alice?—why won't it go away?" Lily asked in a small voice.

"It hurts because you care about him."

Lily let the back of her head hit the stone wall on Alice must have propped her up and ran a hand through the ends of her vibrantly red hair.

"If I cared at all about James, I wouldn't have hurt him in the first place." Lily said, laughing slightly at the bitter irony of it all.

"But we always end up hurting the ones we love most," Alice reasoned as though Lily were a child and she was being taught a valuable lesson.

"I don't _love_ James, Alice..." Lily sighed tiredly. "I wish people would stop telling me that I _do_ or that it's _bound_ to happen eventually."

"You may not love him now, Lily, but you must feel _something_ for him; otherwise, how would you explain the pain you're feeling now? This isn't guilt you're feeling, love. Guilt wouldn't knock the wind out of you or make you feel like someone's taken an axe to your chest."

As she said this last bit, Alice pointed toward Lily's hand, which was still rubbing circles in the center of her sternum.

"I have to find him, Alice—" Lily said, standing abruptly from her spot against the wall. "I have to fix this."

"Lily, wait; don't you think you should let James cool off for a bit?"

Lily shook her head furiously.

"The last thing he needs right now is more time for this to fester..." Lily reasoned. "No, I have to fix this _now._ "

And with that, Lily bounded down the corridor in the same direction as James and Sirius had disappeared down not moments before.

She got as far as the Gryffindor common room before realizing she had no idea where she was going. Almost without thinking, Lily bounded up the stairs that led to the boy's dormitory—if James was hiding anywhere in the Gryffindor Tower, her first guess was that it'd be in his own dormitory.

She didn't bother to knock, for fear of not being let in, and simply bounded in, not thinking of the consequences.

Lily's eyes locked on a tuft of jet black hair between the two beds nearest the door and her heart sped up.

"James?" she called out almost breathlessly.

The head of hair moved and a pair of grey eyes met hers. _Sirius._

"What do you want, Evans?"

His eyes were cold and Lily fought the urge to shiver as she answered.

"I—I was just looking for James..."

"Don't you think," Sirius said, speaking in a low tone, "that you've done enough for one day, Evans? What else is there to do? Pour salt in his open wounds?"

"That's not fair," Lily said, suddenly angry at him for thinking so little of her. "You have _no_ right to assume I'm here to do anything—"

"After what you _said_ ," Sirius chuckled darkly, cutting her off, "how am I supposed to _assume_ any different, Evans?"

"Sirius, please," Lily said. "I need to see him—I need to fix this—What I said back there, I didn't mean it, I—"

"If you didn't _mean it_ , you wouldn't have _said_ it. Learn to take responsibility for your actions, Lily, because there are some things you've got to live with for the rest of your life," Sirius said, with so much force that Lily, who had stepped back, stumbled slightly.

Noticing her discomfort, he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose for a moment as though trying to control his temper.

"If you didn't mean it, then _why_ did you say it?" he asked again, in the warmest tone he'd used with her so far.

"People say things they don't mean all the time, Sirius," Lily said. "But..."

"But?" Sirius echoed, encouraging her to continue.

"But at the time," Lily said, trying to put the jumble of thoughts in her head into coherent sentence. "I _wanted_ to knock him off the high horse he positions himself on—I wanted him to _feel_ what everyone who becomes the target of his taunting feels—I wanted him to _feel_ what _I_ feel _every time_ he puts me in the spotlight..."

She paused at what she had just confessed to a boy she arguably barely knew.

"I feel like I lose a little respect in the eyes of everyone else in this school." Lily said after a moment. "But James...it's like something drastic needs to happen for anything of that magnitude to get through his head."

"So in a nutshell...you wanted to wound his ego because he's wounded yours," Sirius summed up. "Do you know what's funny about that?"

He didn't give her time to answer, but rather answered the question he had posed himself.

"The fact that I believe _you're_ the one who's going around telling everyone that 'an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.' I always took you for the type who would follow your own advice, but I guess I was wrong."

"Go ahead, Sirius." Lily said, jaw set. "Lay it on me—call me a hypocrite! Call me whatever you'd like because I _guarantee_ you _nothing_ you say could make me feel any worse than the way I already do."

"And how exactly _do_ you feel at the moment, Evans?"

"Like someone's dumped a bucket of ice in my stomach," Lily said. "Like I've got the whole of the Forbidden Forest's centaurs dancing away on my back—Like a giant has taken permanent residence on my chest..."

She swallowed hard—trying to put the pain into words was only making her feel more aware of it all.

Sirius studied her in silence before he finally spoke.

"You really didn't mean it, did you?"

Lily shook her head, focusing on an old bit of folded parchment that Sirius had in his hand.

"And if I told you where he was..." Sirius said cautiously.

Lily's head snapped up quickly, her eyes full of hope.

"Would you tell him exactly what you just told me?"

"Yes," Lily said quietly. "Sirius...please. I—"

He held up a hand and Lily silenced herself.

"James?" Sirius called out, much to Lily's confusion.

Her eyebrows knitted together—what was Sirius playing at? Was this some kind of joke meant to get her hopes up?

And that's when she heard it—an audible rustle of fabric before James Potter materialized before her eyes as though out of thin air.

She gasped in shock but resisted the urge to let out the small yelp that had bubbled to the back of her throat.

"I'll give you two some time alone, then." Sirius said, walking out of the room and making sure to close the door behind him.

They stared at each other in silence—his eyes bearing the same guarded expression she had seen earlier and hers still wide in shock at his sudden appearance.

"H—how did you do that?" Lily asked, finally breaking the silence.

"Oh, um...Invisibility Cloak," James said, holding up the span of silvery fabric. "It's a family heirloom...comes in handy sometimes, especially when—well, when you don't want people to know you're there."

"You heard everything I said." Lily said, breaking the silence that had once again fallen over them.

"I heard everything you said," James echoed, as though repeating her words would make them all the more a fact.

"I'm sorry, James, I'm _so_ sorry," Lily said, her voice quivering as she felt tears burn the back of her eyes. "I didn't mean the half of it—especially the part about you dying. The truth is, if you died, I—I don't think I'd know what to do with myself and—and—"

She was breathing heavily now as though going into hysterics and James, worrying they would have to continue this conversation in the hospital wing, grabbed her gently by the arms and pulled her over to his bed.

She sat on the edge, hands twisting in her lap and James sat beside her, rubbing her back in what he hoped to be a soothing manner as he waited for her breathing to slow.

"Better?" he asked after a moment, a small smile that seemed almost forced playing on his lips.

She nodded, letting out a puff of air.

"I never knew you felt that way..." James said after a moment.

"How could you have?" Lily asked. "I've always treated you like you should consider taking permanent residence at the bottom of the lake with the Giant Squid."

James laughed, and the sound both startled her and sent a warmth through her that she hadn't been expecting.

"Yes, well, you have but well—I was referring to what you said earlier...about how my _antics_ toward you have a knack of degrading your self-image among everyone else in the school—I'm sorry, Lily—"

"But, you're not supposed to be the one apologizing." Lily said, cutting him off.

"I won't let you take the full credit for this one," James said, his expression determined. "We were both in the wrong in some form or another."

"But the difference is, you never really meant to hurt me at all," Lily reasoned.

"It doesn't matter, though," James said, much to Lily's surprise.

"The point is," James continued, "that we both hurt each other, whether intentionally or not, but if we're both sorry now..."

Lily waited for him to continue, and James, realizing he had been quiet for too long, spoke again.

"Sorry," he said, looking at her face. "I was just...trying to figure out what all this means—what it _proves_."

He stared at her intently and Lily searched his eyes, unsure about whether or not the question was rhetorical.

"In the end," she said finally. "I guess it only proves that we both know we care about each other."

"Seems like a pretty fucked-up way of showing someone you care, don't you think?" James said, a trace of a crooked smile on his face. "Why do _you_ think we're so dead set on hurting the ones we care about most?"

"Probably because we know they're the only ones who love us enough to forgive us in the end," Lily said.

A silence settled among them, during which Lily would have most certainly broken eye contact had she been in this situation even a week ago, but now, she found herself unable to look away. And it was there, sitting in the boys' dormitory and looking into the eyes of James Potter that everything finally clicked, and without thinking of the consequences, but knowing it was _right,_ Lily said the first thing that came to her mind.

"I love you, James."

His eyes widened slightly and for the first time a fear of rejection registered in her mind, but Lily knew there was no going back now.

"I think, deep down," she continued. "I've always known—I've just been too stubborn to admit it to myself."

And just as quickly as that fear of rejection had registered, it was brushed away as James broke into what she now realized was her favorite lopsided grin.

"You don't know how long I've waited for you to say that."

A warmth spread over her and the bucket of ice that had seemed permanently lodged in her stomach seemed to melt at his words but she didn't have time to say anything else before James' lips found hers.

He didn't have to say anything back— _actions_ , as they said, _spoke louder than words_.

And as she sat there, completely wrapped up in James in every possible way, her heart skipped a beat in knowing that James Potter truly did love her back.


End file.
